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Wafers of mass destruction

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Aug 17, 2008

Sigmund Freud reportedly said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But in the Catholic Church, a wafer ain’t just a wafer. Once blessed by the priest, it becomes the body of Christ. And if it’s not immediately consumed, the Eucharist can ruin Sunday mass. You could say it mutates into a wafer of mass destruction.

That’s what recently got a young Catholic dissident in big trouble — to the point of his life being threatened. Here’s a news report.

Now here’s the skinny: Webster Cook, a student senator at the University of Central Florida, vocally disagrees with school funds going to Catholic and other religious groups. Nonetheless, a few Sundays ago, he brought a friend to campus mass. The friend apparently had questions about Catholicism.

Rather than swallow the wafer that’s handed to him during Communion, Cook brought it back to his pal in the pews. At one point, Cook claims, a fellow parishioner used physical force to intimidate him into eating the now-holy cracker.

It didn’t work.

According to the local Church, Cook “kidnapped” the body of Christ and, um, held it hostage in a Ziploc bag. Word spread. The parish accused him of committing a mortal sin. Bloggers began pelting Cook with cries of blasphemy. I’m told that he even got death threats.

The following week, Cook returned the wafer along with a letter to parishioners. In it, he took the high road: “I want to thank the individuals who explained the emotional and spiritual pain my possession of the Eucharist caused them to experience. They have demonstrated that the use [of] reason is more effective than the use of force.”

I’ve blogged elsewhere about the rising aggression of the Catholic Church and how that’s linked to the “rights” increasingly demanded by organized religions, including Islam. I’ve also blogged about the humanity of which Catholic leaders are capable and what Muslims can learn from them.

In fact, I’ve often said that my favorite priest is Father David O’Leary, head chaplain at Tufts University in Boston. Father O is a Catholic refusenik. He embraces intellectual inquiry a la Augustine and Aquinas, while refusing to become a robot in God’s name. Not only does Father O challenge various Church edicts; he’s got the spiritual spine to question injustices in other religions — the hallmark of moral courage for any contemporary liberal.

That’s why Father O has gone out of his way to champion Muslim women as imams. His efforts demonstrate that Catholicism can be revolutionary when solid faith trumps insecure dogma.

So this column isn’t motivated by Catholic-bashing. Exactly the opposite: It’s about opposing violence. Period.

Which serves as a reminder for all of you to sign my anti-death threat petition. Its language singles out Islamism because the petition originates in a serious death threat that I and 11 other writers received from ummah.com. You’ll see that the petition advocates “freedom, equal opportunity, human rights and secular values for all.”

I’m happy to say that it’s already supported by nearly 3,500 people worldwide, with the most recent signatories coming from Syria, Argentina, Afghanistan, Australia, Venezuala, Indonesia, Portugal, Malaysia, Finland, Canada, the UAE, America and India.

Such vast global scope is appropriate: When the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head almost 20 years ago, most Christian and Jewish clerics stayed mute. They wouldn’t have threatened their own like this. Still, their silence revealed the universal appeal of dogma.

Wafers of mass destruction are only the latest example of dogma unleashed. I may be crackers for having faith, but my faith welcomes the presence of wafer-smugglers, doubters, even atheists.

God love ‘em all, especially when God’s self-styled emissaries don’t.